For many years already, YEE has been doing its best to develop and maintain a successful and fruitful cooperation with the Youth in Action Program of the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission.

Youth in Action Program is one of the main funders of YEE's projects and almost every year it also provides the financial support for the day-to-day running of the organization in the form of an annual operating grant.

On September 28, 2011, EACEA in collaboration with the European Youth Forum organized a ‘Training and Information Day for bodies active at European level in the field of youth' in Brussels. As YEE was awarded with the YiA annual operating grant for 2011, we were invited to take part as well. There were around 100 representatives from all the organizations that applied for the operating grant for 2011 - either successful or not - present.

The main aim of the meeting was to give a short insight into how the program will look like in the future, to give a better view of how the program works and to enable networking amongst the European youth organisations.

During the whole day many interesting presentations were made. The day started with a short introduction about the political framework and future perspectives for the period after 2014 when the current Youth in Action Program (2007-2013) will come to its end.

Some of the actions will be removed but most of them will remain as they are (EVS, YEs, etc.). Strong focus will be put on mobility of young people, cooperation with the civil society and support will continue to be given to the non-formal learning. As for the financial conditions, the suggestion of the European Commission is a global increase of the budget by 5%. It was also emphasized that as one of the main stakeholders of the YiA Program, we - European youth organizations - can be proud of the content of the actions and projects that we organize. What is lacking in the youth field is the visibility of the program which needs to be improved. That is why we all were encouraged to advocate more for the YiA Program and to make our good projects more visible in order to show their real value and importance.

Afterwards a short overview of various Youth in Action opportunities for funding for 2012 was presented, emphasizing the priorities for 2012 which will be the following - youth unemployment, creativity and entrepreneurship and global environmental challenges such as climate change. The main focus was later given to two actions: 4.1. Support for bodies active at European level in the field of youth (operating grants) and 4.6. Partnerships.

For us, the most important part concerned the call for partners 4.1. Support for bodies active at European level in the field of youth - several members of the EACEA Youth unit presented in more details the most recent development of the e-form and project's administrative and financial management.

In order to assure smooth cooperation and no bad surprises at the final stage of the project (evaluation of the final report), the importance of open and clear communication between the applicants and the Youth unit about any changes occurred during the whole duration of the project was underlined.

Throughout the whole day, the Youth staff of the Agency as well as two representatives of the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe were at our disposal to meet, discuss and ask any specific questions related to our current projects and future applications as well. The day was concluded by questions and answers session.

The meeting was useful not only as we got information about different funding opportunities, about the administrative and financial management and reporting about the grants but also and mainly thanks to the fact that we had the chance to get to know the people we are in contact in our daily work in person (Youth unit, EYF) and discuss any unclear issues or questions directly with them.

To know more:

Youth in Action Programme

Youth Support Systems (Action 4)

Youth in Action - Funding opportunities for 2012

Adriána Harnúšková, Secretary General